Short Lease Properties Masterclass - Clubhouse meet

Down after a busy day. You look comfortable. I am all snuggled on the sofa. Good to hear it, Remy. Good to hear it. Yeah, you guys had a good day? Not too bad, relaxing. Oh, yeah. This might clash with the England match, actually. The England match starts soon against Poland, so some of the men might not, might not turn up. My camera might go off. Yeah, but I might have it on in the background. I didn't even know there was a match on today. Yeah, yeah. It's not, not sure what time it starts. 7:30, 7:45 maybe? Yes, ma'am. I don't know whether you want to kick off, buddy. We'll all go on the show your screen. It's recording now, so people can just jump in and, um, catch up with it, as it were. Oh, yeah. All right. Let's see what's up.

All right, good evening everyone. So, what I'll be talking about today is, um, purchasing, um, low lease flats. So, most of these, or this example, well, most of these are going to be, um, based on examples in North London. So, um, one-bed flats, we're going to talk about many today. So, the basic concept of purchasing a low lease flat is by buying a flat with a low lease and then after that, I'm going to extend the lease. And then after you extend it, it creates an uplifting value. That's the basic concept. You buy a flat with a low lease, extend the lease, and then after that, it creates an uplift in the value of the flat.

So, what is a low lease flat generally? Um, if a flat has a lease of under 80 years, I class it as a low lease flat because after, or below, should I say, 80 years, um, the value of the flat starts to diminish. So, it's best that you, at some point, increase the value of the flat by extending the lease. So, 80 years is like a pinnacle point in terms of leases, in terms of residential leasehold properties. Now, this is called the marriage value. So, the marriage value is basically the difference in a leasehold property's value after the lease has been extended compared to what it was before the lease. So, after 80 years, the value of a flat will be normal, or can be normal. Anything below 80 years, then the value starts to diminish. I mean, on the screen is just a brief definition of what the marriage value is. So, 80 years is more like a key number in terms of flats, residential flats.

Now, for myself, I normally look for flats with a lease of between 60 and 80 years. Yeah. So, if it's below that, it gets a bit iffy. And if it's above that, you don't really gain as much value. So, I always look between flats that have a value of lease length, should I say, between 60 and 80 years. Then, after I've purchased them, um, an extended lease, on average, I look for an uplift of a minimum of between 20 and 25% in terms of uplift. So, this is like a paper way of extending or creating value of a flat, but without doing the BRR. So, the paper version of doing the BRR strategy, um, just by creating uplift in the value of a flat.

So, with the ones that I buy, I use a buy-to-let mortgage generally. Um, a normal buy-to-let mortgage. And normally, it can range between maybe, I don't know, 14, 16, 18 years in terms of the mortgage length. But it's a normal mortgage, so nothing special about it. A normal buy-to-let mortgage. So, with these, I put down maybe a 25% deposit, or sometimes I could put down 80%. So, you're not going to pay off 25% deposit, or I could put down 20% deposit, which means 80% loan-to-value, or 75% loan-to-value, depending on what lender I go with. And generally, um, I go with a two-year fix. And then, just before the end of that two-year fixed, um, I can refinance and take out uplifting the value.

The five main common lenders that I use are Keystone Mortgages, you've got The Mortgage Lender, Kensington, Foundation Home Loans, and Land Bay. Well, is it a main five that I use? There's also a sixth one called Capital Home Loans. Um, and they allow you to have a mortgage, but at the end of a mortgage term, the lease cannot be lower than 40 years. But, um, I haven't used them once yet. So, the main five I've used, like I said before, um, are Keystone, The Mortgage Lender, Kensington, Foundation Home Loans, and Land Bay. And if you use those five, at the end of the mortgage term, um, the lease cannot be lower than 50 years at the end of the mortgage term. But in theory, you're not meant to be really keeping that mortgage with them for the whole over 18 years or 14 years or whatever it is. What you're going to do, you're going to refinance, um, just before the two-year fixed period is up, and then you get a normal 25-year buy-to-let mortgage with the same lender or a different lender after that. So, but initially, just get a two-year fixed and then put down, like I said, 25% deposit or 20% deposit.

Now, Kensington, Kensington do, um, a 20% deposit, which is 80% loan-to-value. So, that's the only one that, of the five or six lenders, that will give you, um, a 20% deposit. Now, this is an example of one I purchased, um, last year. This is a one-bedroom flat in Enfield. Um, it cost £155,000 to buy with a 64-year lease. So, this one I got through one of my contacts. Um, what they do, they've got an investors list. So, every time they get properties onto the market, they always contact the ones on their investors list. And now, it's one of those individuals. So, they phoned me up. I said, "Yeah, we've got this flat coming on next week, and I can get you in there tomorrow or the following day if you want. If you're available, come and see it." So, I did. Um, it was on for £165, but because they know me and everything, they said, "Look, like the vendor wants a minimum of of this amount. So, if you want it, it's yours." So, I managed to get a deal for £155. One-bedroom flat in Enfield with a lease of 64 years left on it.

So, with this particular deal, I got a 13-year mortgage. And it's a 13-year mortgage, two-year fixed. Now, in this particular property, um, lease extension has been going through already, which is fine. This is just a snippet of lease extension documentation. So, this one here was a voluntary lease extension. So, I didn't serve them with a Section 42 notice, just a voluntary one. So, written to them, asked them if they wanted to, or basically if I could extend the lease. And then they said yes. I've asked for an additional 90 years on top of what it is now. And the premium for this one is £15,466. Now, the ground rent is kind of high-ish, but I'll go for that in a minute. It's £255 per annum. And this is doubling every 20 years. And then it's going to be capped at a thousand. Capital, yeah, a thousand pounds a year once it obviously reaches its cap. So, normally, that's, that one's quite a bit high. Could normally, when you extend the lease, a lot, a lot of the time, I try to get it down to maybe, I don't know, peppercorn environment, which is zero, or maybe just keep it like £100 per annum. But because this premium wasn't so bad, it's like £15,000-ish, and I'm getting 90 years on top of it. So, I thought, "You know what? This is not so bad. £250 is is okay because I'll just absorb it."

Now, point number five, it says the costs. So, when you're doing a lease extension, you have to pay for your solicitor's fees and the freeholder's solicitor's fees. And in this case, it was £1,100 plus VAT on top of the premium. So, this was a voluntary lease extension, not Section 42. Wrote to them, we negotiated a little bit, and then they came up with this final figure. And this one, I accepted.

Now, let's go through some of the actual figures now. So, I purchased it for £155,000. The actual lease extension cost was £15,466. I had to pay the freeholder's solicitor's fees, well, £1,100 plus the VAT, so that came in at £1,320. My solicitor's fees, including VAT, was £740. Um, I had to pay for their surveyor to go and survey the property so they can come back with a premium. That was £800. So, all in, um, in total, including the purchase price, was £173,366. Now, because I know the area and I've got two in that block already, um, the end value of this particular flat, um, is valued at £225,000. So, the uplift in value from what I've purchased is that compared to the end value, and obviously all the fees and so forth, uplift is about £51,634. So, this, in theory, is an uplift of about 29.8%. Which is higher than my normal estimate because I always average it between 20 to 25%. It turned out uplift. But this one wasn't so bad. So, that's why I didn't mind, um, with the ground rent being, the ground rent was approximately, what, £250 a year? So, because the uplift was so high, I didn't mind absorbing the £250 ground rent because, like I said, normally the ground rent would go for zero, or at worst £100 per annum. But this one is £250. But because this uplift was higher than normal, I thought, "You know what? Let me just go with it because that money, I can absorb going forward."

So, for this purchase, um, I put down a 25% deposit, which was £38,750. Um, the broker fee, so a survey fee was, um, zero because this particular deal came with a free survey. So, I went with that. Broker fee, £250. Stamp duty was, um, £5,000, £5,250. The solicitor's fees on my end was £1,500. So, all in to purchase it was £45,500. That's the purchase of the property. And then the actual lease extension costs, which means the lease extension premium for their solicitors, my solicitors, the surveyors, all came in at £18,366. So, overall, this particular one, uh, my total spending would have been about £63,866. So, that's all of the money that I put inputted into the deal.

Now, when it comes to the refinancing part, I bought it for £155,000 with an initial deposit. So, that means, um, I've got £116,250 left, which is a 75% that I actually owe the mortgage company. Now, when I refinance it, after I've extended the mortgage, always sending the lease, should I say, um, so I refinanced it at £225. That means it's 75% loan-to-value. So, that means I've got a new mortgage of £168,750. So, the uplift from my initial mortgage to my remortgage is £52,500. So, that's what I've created in terms of an uplift.

Now, as I said before, my initial spend with all of my fees and lease extension costs, deposit, etc., etc., everything came in at £63,866. So, that works out, um, if I was to remortgage and take the cash out, I'm extracting 82.2% of my funds. So, I'm only leaving in a small amount. So, it's not bad, not bad at all. But normally, what I do, my go-to, maybe leaving in about 75% of it, actually. So, it's extracting 75% of it. But in this case, like I said, because the uplift was so high, up was about 29-point-something percent, this one, this this means that I can extract a bit more than normal. So, it's almost like one of the day minutes, we can pull out all of your money, but but not quite. Yes.

So, with this one as well, obviously, I've got a rental income coming in. So, rent is in there, and she's paying rent. So, that's fine. So, I've got roughly about £52k uplift with that particular property, but also getting rental income per month. So, it's a two-year fixed, um, 24 months. And I'm paying £314.51 for the mortgage fixed rate for two, for two years. The service charge for this one is £93 a month. So, all in, my total expenses is £407.51 pence.

Now, as you probably know already, I go under the guaranteed rent scheme most of the time. So, with this particular property, I'm getting £950 guaranteed rent. So, when you minus the £407.51 of this particular property, it's £542.49 pence that I'm making per month. If I was to do an open market, then I could probably get £1,100 for it for the one-bedroom flat. And then I'd minus the £407.51, and then probably minus another maybe £70 in terms of, um, agent's fees. So, if I was to get an open market, I could probably make over £600 profit per month. But my strategy is just to have regular cash flow coming in. So, I'd rather be guaranteed than having the risk of a tenant not paying, or paying a little bit of it, or paying half of it. I just like the guaranteed rent, so the regular income coming in for the remainder of, obviously, how long I keep the property.

All right, so that's the end of that example one, a flat that I bought recently, or last year. Now, lease extension process. You've got two different ways of extending a lease. The first one is a voluntary lease extension, and the second one is serving a Section 42 notice to the freeholder. A majority of the time, I like to use the voluntary extension method. This is where you contact the freeholder, um, and ask for, obviously, the length of the lease to be extended, or you can ask them to maybe purchase the freehold. It depends on what type of flat you have. If it's a conversion, then a lot of the time, you can maybe try and buy the freehold from the freeholder, which I've done in the past as well. So, with that previous example that I showed you, that was a voluntary basic extension. So, I contacted the owner, which is the freeholder, I negotiated with them, and then we came to an agreement, and we settled it, as you saw, was £15,000 and some change to extend the lease.

Now, with, um, this method as well, you need to own the property for at least a minimum of two years before you can apply to extend a lease. But if you're going through the purchase, you can also ask your solicitor to ask the freeholder if they're willing to extend the lease before the two years is up if you're doing it the voluntary method. Another way you could do it if you're going through the purchase is asking the vendor, the current vendor, to serve a Section 42 notice on your behalf, and then when you complete, you transfer it over to your name so you can finish off the notice period. So, that's another way of getting around the two-year ownership of, um, owning a residential property.

So, for those that don't know, um, a Section 42 notice is a formal request from a leaseholder to the freeholder or landlord, which enables them to apply for a lease extension of a minimum of 90 years on top of what the lease is at the moment, along with a peppercorn ground rent, which means the ground rent will be reduced to zero. So, this is a formal notice, and it's best to get your solicitor or the vendor's solicitor to do that for you on your behalf. It's not worth doing it by yourself because if you get the wording wrong, then they can always throw it out. I mean, it's going to be like issues, if you know what I mean. So, so, just to recap on this point, you can always do a voluntary lease extension during the purchase or after the purchase without owning the property for two years. I've done it like many times. But if you're going to do it after you purchase a property, make sure you get your solicitor to contact the freeholder just to get their permission. So, when you do complete, then there's no issues in you having to wait two years or before two years to extend it because it's better that way.

Now, the lease length when you're extending the lease, a lot of the time, you have extended to 99 years, 125 years, or 90 years above where it currently is. With this previous example, what I just did when I went through, I asked them initially for 90 years above what it is at the moment with a peppercorn environment. But they came up with quite a high fee. So, I negotiated it down a bit, and then what they did, added the lower cost, in a way, onto the onto the environment. That's why the ground rent was a bit higher than normal. But because I'm making so much of an uplift, that's why I thought, "You know what? Just go ahead a bit and absorb it." But yeah, so 99 years, 125 years, or 90 years above what it is at the moment. Those are the main three ways or limbs that you can extend the lease.

Now, I'm doing another one at the moment. This is a separate one that's going through now with one of my other properties. Now, this freeholder, um, has asked, has agreed, three actually. This is a voluntary one. So, going back and forth, just maybe two or three letters, and then we agreed on a fee for this voluntary lease extension. So, this one, they've agreed to extend it to, um, by 90 years on top of what it is now. This one was 62 years left on it, and we've agreed, um, a premium. And yeah, 90 years on top of what it is now. And the ground rent is going to be zero, which is good. So, with them, um, the voluntary solicitor on the 6th of September. And now, so from that letter, what I've said on 6th of September, things have to get moving because it says, "If we don't complete within the first three months of this letter, then, um, time will lapse." I mean, after that, basically, what they've agreed to before may not be valid. I mean, I've got to do the whole process again. So, they give me three months to complete this full lease extension process. But it's because we've agreed a fee already, it shouldn't be a problem with this one because I've never gone over in the three-month period, which is fine. And for their fees for this one, it's £1,250 plus the VAT. And then I've added on an extra £15 for their disbursements. So, every solicitor for acting on behalf of the freeholder will give you some sort of variation in terms of their fees. But on average, it's anything between, I don't know, £1,200 to £1,500. And you have to pay back as well as your solicitor's fees. So, this one is what's going through now.

All right, so whenever you get the premium agreed, make sure you complete within that three-month window, otherwise you might lose some of your fees, and they're entitled to by law to not carry or not go ahead of it, basically. And then you've got to pay some more premiums again on top of that. But so far, um, in my 20 years, I haven't experienced any of that. So, as long as you've got a decent solicitor, then you should be fine, I reckon.

All right, so lease extension, how do you find the cost of an estimate of lease extension? Can you see the screen still? Yes, Matt. Yeah. Yes, that's all right. All right. So, these extension cost estimates, there's about five or six different ways, but you can get the actual idea of how much it will cost to extend a lease. Now, with one of mine, um, my solicitor, who's local to the area, she's, that previous one, but I just showed you about, letter, she's done a couple of lease extensions in that same block herself. So, I mentioned to her, like, I've asked her, "Can you represent me for Mr. Lee's extension what I'm doing now?" I mean, she said yes. She said, "Which one is it?" I said, "Glendon Court." Says, "Oh, we've done one of them last year." Made, she looked back through her files. I mean, she showed me, not showed me, what she told me the cost of that particular lease extension. So, when I was negotiating with the freeholder, I knew exactly what sort of price I should be getting. So, that's one way of doing it. So, local solicitor knowledge is a good thing to do as well, good thing to have.

Number two, um, whenever my solicitor does not know, I've always asked my lease extension surveyor. He's got an accurate calculator on his computer, um, in terms of lease extension costs. So, I know going forward, if I'm negotiating again, I'll just come back to him and say, "Look, Andrew, does this look right? Is it too much? Is it too low? Too high? Whatever it is." I mean, he'll, he'll just email back and say, "Yep, that looks reasonable," or "No, it shouldn't be this much." That's number two.

Number three, you can always ask or knock on some of the doors in that same block. So, for example, um, if you've got nine flats in that block, the chances are one of them in that block would have extended the lease at some point. So, some of you might be tenanted, but at least leave a note. Or if they're owner, owner-occupier, you can always ask one of them if they ever sent the lease on the block. And then if they have, you can get a rough idea of how much it will cost. In some cases, you can contact the freeholder directly. So, with some of mine flats, um, it's in a different complex, but it's the same freeholder to some of the other flats that I hold. So, because they know who I am, I've written them a letter in the past and said, "Yep, I own 53 Gardens, um, but I'm looking for a lease extension in in 23, Stone Halls." So, because they know who I am, they'll write back to me and they've given me a quote because they know who I am. But if you come off the street and if you're, if they have no record of you, they may, that may be tricky. But that's one way of doing it. Yeah. So, if you've got flats with that particular freeholder, you can contact them directly, and then they can give you an idea of lease extension premium.

Number five, yeah, don't actually, actually, yeah, same one. Number five, number three are the same. And then number six is to use the internet. So, you've got lease extension calculators online. At the top of the screen, you've got myleaseholder.co.uk. That's quite a good one. And you've also got lease-advice.org. Those two are quite good. If you don't have, um, access to a lease extension surveyor or a solicitor, or don't protect the freeholder, these ones are quite good. And accuracy is not too bad. It's not too bad. Always give you maybe a swing, the ones I'm looking at a swing of maybe about four to five grand either way. But these calculators are quite accurate, so they're worth using just to get an idea of the lease extension cost before you actually go ahead with your deal. Okay. Yeah. I don't, I can't screen. I don't know if it's just me, but I can't see anything on your screen. Okay. Yeah, I'll unpause it and then I'll put it back. Right. Oh, can you see it now? Yeah, yeah. Come back now. Yeah. All right. Yeah, you're good. All right. Yeah, so these ones are the websites that you can use to actually find the lease extension estimates. Yeah, these two are quite good. All right.

So, where do I find these properties? So, number one is the internet. You can either use Rightmove, Zoopla, OnTheMarket.com. Those ones are quite popular. Um, what I normally do is sort by lowest price. And I filter out all of the ones which says on Rightmove, for example, I take out retirement homes, to take out new builds, and I take out shared ownership, um, or Help to Buy properties. So, I'll put the filter, don't show, don't show, don't show. They go out. I mean, I change it to lowest price. Now, normally, the ones with the lowest leases are the lowest price ones, and they come up first on the list. That's one way of doing it.

Number two, I've got links with, um, local agents that I've built up over the years. So, that's one of the advantages of buying in the same area. When you're buying in the same area over a number of years, then you build up a rapport with those agents, and then they're more likely to contact you first if you have any good deals come onto the market. So, that's number two. It's what I've been using a lot. So, I hardly find them on the Rightmove or Zoopla or so forth. Normally, they just contact me and let me know. But yeah, we've got one coming in next week. If you've got the funds, there, come in and obviously view it. If not, we'll be telling when the next one's coming up.

And number three, we've got a lot of property friends. So, they, they're always looking for their kind of properties. But sometimes they might see, "Oh, there's one over shortly still." Just ping it over to me and say, "Yeah, Jay, you've seen this property with a short lease. Might be interested in it." So, um, it's good to have like a circle of, circle of friends because I can always refer you to properties to yourself if you miss them. Well, the main three ways that I find.

All right, so if anyone wants to contact me, I'm on Instagram, or someone on LinkedIn, and obviously, almost someone on Clubhouse. Oh, yeah. These are studies that I use, basically. On the left-hand side, most of them are strategies. I've got a BRR, which I say is Buy, Extend, Rent, Rent it out. I also have, obviously, some where I do the triple threat. I might buy the property, extend the lease, I might refurb it, refinance, and then repeat. I also do vanilla buy-to-lets as well. Okay.

So, what I'll do, I'll open up 20 questions. If anyone has any questions they want to ask. Hi, JP. Hi. Hi, it's Heidi. How are you, mate? All right. Yeah, good. Thanks yourself? Yeah, very good. Very interesting. I enjoyed that discussion. Just wanted to go back to where you said that, um, you saw the, um, the first flat example you showed us, um, and you said that you purchased it for £155, and you just knew that if you extend the lease, you're going to get a decent increase in them property value, and it went right up to £225. How do you get a feel of how much extending a lease is going to actually increase the value of the property you're buying? Yes, with me, I always look at the potential end value. So, I do my research. Um, so either use Rightmove or ask the local agents how much it will cost, or say how much the value of that particular property is in in that block. But, um, I've got a feel in the air anyway because, I mean, I've got a lot of flats in that particular area. So, I know roughly how much they're going to cost. But, um, so I have a look at the agent as an after agent, or I look at, um, previous sold prices and current prices of those particular properties online. Okay. Okay. Perfect. I'm going to work backwards. So, you can get some advice from the agents. They would know roughly if you did this, it's going to go up to this much. Get some opinions. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah.

Hello, hello. Canary. Hi, Jace. Eddie, you're right, man. Hey, doctor, you by yourself? I'm good, man. Great presentation. I'm driving, so I have to be really careful. But, um, quick question then. So, which strategy is the best to actually, you guys were talking about when we spoke before about flipping a property? So, I see with what the one that, one of the first one you mentioned, you put it on a two-year deal. So, if I tried to flip it that way, then I'll have a penalty of God knows how many thousands. So, what's the easiest way to flip it with the lowest kind of penalty? Does that make sense? Yeah, yeah. Is it not, it's not extending the lease. That's not the process I would use. I'd use a different thing. Oh, well, not lease extension. Talking about something else. No, I don't mind doing the lease extension, but can I do the lease extension and flip it without incurring fees, or do I have to tie myself into a two-year deal, etc., etc.? How do I get around that? Yeah, because I want to pull the money out straight away. Let's just, let's put it that way. So, I'm trying to build up a part of capital that makes sense. Okay. Yeah. So, no rule number one, what you could do, um, I'll put mine on two-year fix. Sometimes you might be able to do on a variable mortgage, right? So, if you extend the lease, obviously, in the first three months or six months or whatever it is, and then after the six-month period, maybe put it on the market and then sell it after that. Right. Number two, you could probably buy, not probably, but you could buy it either by bridging or buy cash. I mean, that way, um, you don't incur any early payment charges. But bridging is a bit more expensive. But if you buy a cash, then obviously there's no fees involved. Cash is out of the question. Yeah. So, when you say that, extend the lease after six months, or the owner waives that period where I have to wait for them to extend the lease if I sell, do I not have fees? Because I've sold in terms of the mortgage that I took out for extension, it doesn't work that way, does it? If I sell and I don't have those fees associated with the mortgage length, is that right? Yeah, if it's like a two-year fix for, for, if you break it within the first year, then you've got to pay early repayment charges, right? Yeah. But if you know, is there no way around that? Is that what you're saying? In terms of, you could do a one-year fixed. There are some one-year fixed out there, but the rates might be a bit higher, or a variable rate. Okay. So, a variable is pretty good in this. Can all right, all right, fine. Yeah. Okay. Yes, if we do a variable rate, um, yeah, it's going to be a bit higher. Like with visa, I was getting like 2.59 or 2.79 or no, I mean, I mean, but if you do a variable rate, it might be a bit higher. It might be in the freeze might be like 3.14 or 3.3.59. So, they know that you might be exiting that, that, that product within a short period of time. That's why the way around it for me would be probably variable rate. And I think, yeah, exactly. Yeah. For the first year, if I want to turn it over, I'd sell it then. I need to have a variable rate, and that way it's easier. Yeah, exactly. And plus as well, depending on how you're going to extend the lease, if you do it within the first three months or so, it might take a little while to be registered with Land Registry because you said we'll send it off to, um, registry. I mean, could be some delays at the moment because of COVID. It might, it might take another three months to be registered. Cool. Yeah. It's got to be officially registered before you can actually sell it on. Brilliant. Yeah. Yeah. All right. That's good. That's good intel. I'll be on your case for more info anyway. [Laughter] Thank you very much, man. I appreciate you. You're welcome. You're welcome.

Hey, JP. Sally, can you hear me? I can hear you. Yeah. Yeah, I just want to thank you much for your presentation, by the way. And thank you for sending the link through Instagram for remembering me on that. So, I have to give you more shout out on in the early morning runs then. You're welcome. You're open. Uh, Jeff, just a quick one. Um, well, another quick one. I've got two things. One, if it's possible to either get a copy of the recording for the Zoom call, but I think some, I mean, I missed out some things in the beginning. The other question I wanted to ask is, and now currently, I know the market is changing, was covered in terms of backlog. How long, um, should you allow for the accession to go through, uh, before you can, let's say, remortgage or or yes, before before you can actually kind of remortgage property? Do you need to actually wait until everything is fully completed, and then you can do remote, which I'm guessing so? I just want to get in there and the length of the timer will show up on Land Register and all that kind of stuff. Yeah, no, on the normal circumstances, yeah, it can be done. Well, which is pre-COVID, right? Pre-COVID, yeah. It could take between six to eight weeks. But now there's a bit of a delay. So, you could take, it's, it's, it's not fully, it's not fully sure. But in my experience so far, probably gonna be between three to six months at the moment in terms of a delay. Okay. Yeah, about three to six months because unless things speed up, once things started to open up, yeah, and then obviously back media few staff go back to the office, and so forth. Um, yeah, we've been about three to six months. You should be registered. But normally, it's six to eight weeks normally in my experience. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Uh, that's what I said. That's great to me. And, um, yeah, do you mind just repeating for me, sorry, the mortgage, uh, guys who can actually do these mortgages? The two brokers or five brokers you mentioned? Sorry. Oh, yeah. Yeah. So, with mortgages, there's five that I use or have used. Um, the first one is, um, Keystone Mortgages. Yeah. Keystone. Yeah. Yeah. The second one is The Mortgage Lender. Okay. The Mortgage Lender. Then you have Foundation Home Loans. Yeah. Foundation Home Loans. Yeah. You have Land Bay. Land Bay. Land. Okay. Yeah. And you have Kensington. Now, with Kensington, Kensington will offer you, or cannot for you, depending on the rental calculation, they can offer you, um, 80% loan-to-value, which means you've got to put down 20% deposit. Uh, okay. I never, it's not too bad. Last time I checked, it was like 3.99% for an 80% loan-to-value deal, fixed for two years. And the arrangement fee was £1,999. And it's 199? Yeah. Yeah. But that changes daily or weekly. I mean, their last 75% deal with Kensington, um, which is 25% deposit, that one was 2.99%, um, fixed for two years. And the arrangement fee for that one was £995. Nine five. Yeah. Nine and five. Yeah. Okay. That's that's no less. And then there's one other one actually, um, yeah, we both learned those that are mentioned. Yep. Like I was saying before, um, at the end of the mortgage term, the lease cannot be lower than 50 years at the end of a term. So, we've one up this example I've done here, and the previous one. This one, I got a 13-year mortgage because at the end of the term, the lease cannot be lower than 50 years. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. But obviously, before then, I would have extended the lease anyway. So, so it's fine. That's what they do. I mean, one of one called them Capital Home Loans, um, which is, they've been around for a while, and their end of term is 40 years. But I don't know what their rates are, but the lease can be 40 years at the end of the mortgage term. All right. Yeah. Thank you, people. I appreciate it. And the recording, you've got to speak to Nick about. I think it's only available in the members lounge on the Property 101 group. You might have to sign up. But Nick mentioned that to you afterwards. We'll talk about it afterwards. Oh, yeah. I didn't know that. Okay. Property 101 club. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, I'll make a note of that. Um, um, yeah, and, uh, just that's just the final one. If somehow you managed to get, um, I'm thinking for to get investor who let's say can purchase the property out in cash in terms of buying it and also extending it, but then when I maybe want to use a mortgage later on to pull the money out, um, is there any particular lender you recommend for that? I want to just basically purely on the, um, on the rental income of the property, or do you know, can it be like a normal standard buy-to-let kind of like mortgage? Yeah, no, more standard buy-to-let. Yeah. With them, yeah, with these ones as well, under my own name. I haven't bought for a limited, um, with, um, the rental calculation. With most of these, um, they want you to have 145% rental income. And for the limited, it's a bit lower. So, it's 145% and that's like 5.5, yeah, 5.5% above that. Yeah. The stress test is 5.5 for both of them. And the rental calculations for an individual is 145, and for a limited company, it came out 125%. So, there obviously is more favoring towards limited companies in this case. But these ones are bought under my name. So, but yeah, that's probably what's it. My favorite one, probably Foundation Home Loans, because they're quite good. And, and second is The Mortgage Lender. Those two I like the most. With The Mortgage Lender, and there's no minimum income. Yeah. So, you can buy it without having to show them that you earn a minimum of £25,000 a year or anything like that. Uh, yeah. Okay. Yeah. Okay. That's great because, yeah, I was kind of, um, gearing towards that. Yeah. We have to be kind of a minimum certain mortgages. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Uh, that, that, that, that was The Mortgage Lender. No, yeah. The Mortgage Lender have no minimum income requirement. Okay. So, they can really pay my base on the property income. No, yeah. Yeah. Basically. Yeah. Yeah. Ah, perfect. That's great. Yeah. And they're quite good. The rates are quite good as well. Yeah. Oh, that's, uh, yeah, that's, that's great. Thank you very much, JP. Appreciate that. All right. You're welcome. You're welcome.

Hey, JP. It's Isaac. How are you? I'm not too bad, thanks. You yourself? Yeah, not too bad. Not too bad. Um, yeah, my questions, um, a quick one actually. I might, I'm gonna have two quick questions if that's all right. Um, and thank you for doing this, by the way. I think even though I've heard you talk about this on Clubhouse, it's nice to kind of hear it, um, in, in a little bit more of a slower pace because I think, um, there's a lot more detail that I'll post up here. So, super, super valuable. Um, I was just going to say, so, um, first question, with the lenders that you're talking about, are, when you're talking about 80%, are you talking about 80% of current value, or are they, are these lenders recognizing the future value once you extend the lease? Or are there lenders out there who do recognize, um, if you decide to go down a lease extension route, are they willing to lend to you up to the, the market value of the, of the extended lease? Oh, yeah. Now, with these fives, they lend to you in the current value. Okay. Cool. So, you want your, so you're, you're plugging the gap, or so you're negotiating down at current value, and then you're realizing the future value down the road, basically. So, you're having to put in your cash. There's no way of kind of, I guess, um, chopping it up to try and reduce your cash involvement, basically. You actually, you have to put something in. Yeah, you gotta put something. Yeah. These ones, we start by doing what I'm doing. You have to have some cash initially to start it, and then you can take out a majority of your cash afterwards. Okay. Well, I think what you're mentioning there, though, um, I think some bridging lenders might be able to do what he just mentioned, where they lend on the potential end value of it, but, Okay. Yeah. But I'm guessing they'll take some security or something like that, though. Exactly. You'll need something. My second question is, um, quite interesting the fact that you obviously invest in your personal, in your personal name. I know it's been kind of hot topic, everyone jumping towards investing in, um, in companies. And just, I guess, I just want, just out of curiosity, and how comes you still choose to do it in your personal name, with all of the changes that have come in with Section 24? You, you don't have to go into it in detail, but just, just out of curiosity. Yes, basically, what happened, um, when George Osborne changed the rules, I think it was, what, 2014-ish, when he said that, um, interest payments up to 20% can't be, well, after 20% claimed. I sat down with my tax advisor, through accountant, and it went through all of my figures. So, by that time, I think I must have had, not even maybe about 18 properties or so, something like that, by then. And then I had had some income coming in from elsewhere as well. And then we looked at everything, and then you just said that it's not worth you, um, starting to buy, well, basically, you asked me as well, which one to use the money for. So, I wanted to use like my personal use, holidays, experiences, cars, etc., etc. So, you said to me, based on all of what you told me today and your current earnings, there's no point in you going for a limited company. You may as well just use it under your personal name because my, my probably when I get a bit older, my main aim is probably not to have any mortgages. So, the aim is to probably pay them all off eventually, like an exit strategy. And then if you don't have any mortgages in the future, I mean, Section 24 doesn't apply to you. It only applies to interest payments. But if you have no interest payments in the future, then it won't apply to you. Plus, as well, if I buy through a limited company, um, I've got to pay 19% corporation tax at the moment. And where she said they wish you the chance, like it's going to increase it eventually to 25%. By the moment, it's 19% corporation tax. And then any money that I extract out of a company, um, I would have to pay 37.5% dividend tax. So, that's like the additional tax bracket based on what I'm currently earning altogether. So, effectively, I'm more or less being taxed 50% of my income. So, he just said to me, it's not worth it. If I was getting taxed, could be different tax rates, 7.5%, 32.5% if you're a higher rate taxpayer, payer, and 37.5% if you're an additional taxpayer. If you're in the first two categories, then it's not so bad. You've got to think about what you want to do. If you're in the additional tax bracket, then it's probably not worth it because you're going to be be taxed over half if you try and extract the money at the company. Obviously, some people will leave the money in their company so they can build, build, build, build. And then if they want to use it, then that's a different story. If they want to try and extract it, because the first £2,000 that you extract from the company is tax-free. And after that, you get paid dividend tax when you record it on your SA 302 form. But it depends on what your end goal is as well. Or you might want to leave it in the company and build your portfolio up because you can be paying less tax. But that income or that profit, you're not really going to use much of it because you're leaving it in the company. So, you might leave it for your, if you're your family members, or for your children, your son, your daughter, your siblings, and so forth. You can leave it in there, let them benefit from it. That's fine. Or another way you can be amazed, maybe start using your personal tax allowance of £12,500 and start extracting a little by little. Or you can put maybe family members on the on the payroll and start paying them little by little so they can use their tax allowance. But I just think of it for my personal view, if I'm going to use the money that I'm making from the property, what's in the company, I'd only be taxed too much by extracting it out. So, what I've done, I just bought basically two properties. Um, I'm paying about an extra grand a month in tax. So, I bought two properties. Those

Two properties. I just pay for my extra tax. I mean, the rest of it is, is just mine. Yeah, but we've limited companies, but not one size fits all. So it depends on your personal circumstances. So if you're going to build, it's good. Put belief in there. Just you can accumulate properties faster. Or if you can leave some to your children or your family members, then yeah, that's a good idea. But if you're going to lose the money day to day and for your personal use, then it might not be a good idea. It was best to speak to your tax advisor or your accountant to get your overall picture. I mean, they can decide what's what's best for you personally. Yeah.

Now, thank you for that. That's a lot more information than I thought you were going to share. And like you said, it always comes down to your personal circumstances. I think after the announcements today, everyone should be talking to their tax advisor to be fair. But yeah, thank you for that. All the best.

All right, great knowledge there. Okay, just before I ask a question, I was going to make a comment too. I think there's a chap that asks about the uh flipping, how best to, um, how best to structure their flipping. You've given two great examples, two great ways of doing it. I'm going to suggest a third way as well, where depending on the relationship with the vendors, they might be able to do a delayed completion and then not actually have to own it and then flip it. But that again, it just depends on how well they are to manage the relationship with the vendors. But my question really is, um, in terms of from applying where section 42 has been served for you, um, often I see on some auction lots where I would probably expect that the, um, fee, the extension before about 100, but I see people observed section 42 with a very low number, maybe 40,000 as opposed to what I think it should be. What's your best advice? Is it best not to have a section 42 selves, or have someone that serves it and makes a very low, um, a low ball offer? Which one would you, uh, best advise?

Play the first part of the question. Um, I missed the first public say. Not the first part was just a comment about the guy that wanted to structure. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. They can do a delay and they don't have to own it at all, um, if they have a good relationship with the, uh, uh, with the vendor. Um, then the question itself is about section 42 served before you buy it, where the vendor sells it and then you inherit it. Um, so, um, when you send the section 42, you actually propose a number, right? Um, I've seen some people that propose a very low number compared to what I think it should be. So my question is, is it best for someone to serve the section 42 and give a very low number, or you just, or rather let you serve it yourself? All right, having someone serve a very low number. Yeah, I think low numbers in that release. Sorry, low numbers in the lease extension cost, you mean the cost. That's right. Yeah. So let's say it might be, you think it's 80,000, but someone who sells it and actually, um, I put a number of 40 to 5,000 for, for example. Is there any violation in that at all? Um, probably not really. What, what you might have to do if they're serving it on, on your behalf, um, I would get your solicitor to serve it for them. Obviously, they've got, they've got assistance to representing them in terms of the sale of their property. But in terms of section 42 notice, I would get, um, your solicitor to serve it on their behalf. At least that way you can negotiate the price because it's doing it. I mean, it comes up with a premium that that's quite high, then you're in for a bad deal. So yeah, I do it on, on their behalf with your solicitor. And then as well, even then, what I would do as well is have a backup. Um, I'd also get my solicitor to write to the freeholder as the second option of ending the lease before owning the property for two years. But if, if at the end of it, some for, I don't know, like the reader section 429 is, um, fee of X amount, but, but you're not happy with it and you've used best visitors, but at least have the voluntary release extension option afterwards after you complete. So that gives you option to negotiate with them afterwards. So that can be your plan B.

Okay, okay. That sounds good. Yeah, I think what I find is that when the vendors serve it, they tend to put a low number. And then if you're buying it, and you might think, oh, there's a low number, I've been asked for for section 42, which might not be, uh, very accurate. But yeah, thanks, a great response. Thank you, Jason.

All right, you're welcome. All right, sorry again. Yeah, yeah, I can hear you. I, um, yeah, sorry. I thought I just asked another question. I don't know if anyone did. Wanted to go. I didn't hear anything at the moment. But, uh, just a quick one. I think this hopefully will also benefit everyone. Like I've been obviously, um, taking a lot of notes while everyone's asking questions as well. Um, I just want to get pretty much your view, JP, in terms of, uh, uh, the new legislation that's post. It hasn't come into force yet regarding about kind of regarding by lease extension. It's going to get your views, um, around that, which obviously they're planning to get rid of them. And, uh, would there be any kind of potential benefit for us in the future? I mean, I just want to give you your views in terms of how you see that playing out.

Yeah, so at the moment, we've delayed it again. So I think the next review or going to be 2023, 2024. That's when we're going to start to review again. But, um, as far as I can tell from what their initial documentation states, if your lease is above 80 years, then you might not get much benefit or my premiums might even go up if you extend the lease. And your lease is above 80 years. If your lease is below 80 years, then you're more likely to benefit from the new reforms that are coming in. So that's what I've seen so far. Yeah. So if it's about eight years and you want to extend the lease, I'll extend it now before the premiums in theory could potentially go up. And if it's under 80 years at the moment, like what I'm doing with most of mine, um, in theory, the premium should be cheaper if you're waiting until 2023, 24, if it goes through. Then that's my initial readings of that that report that they published. Residential properties only.

Sorry, Jason. Can I quickly ask regarding that as well? Is that okay? Yeah, yeah. Because I have a lease that is 73 years. And I did ask my solicitor then, and she actually said, yes, there's this thing coming on. So just hang on now. So that's that's that's the decision I've taken for now. But based on what you're saying now, do you think if you still wait or what would you advise?

The thing is, it's, it's hard to say. But with my, in my personal situation, I'm still going ahead with my lease extensions because they've said that they were going to change the laws before, and then it's been delayed by another two, three years. So what's to say in two, three years' time, delay again? I mean, every, every year that you wait, your premium for a lease extension is going to go up bit by bit by bit. So I'm not sure if it's worth waiting. I don't know, another two, three years. But that could be enough. I don't know, three, four, five grand on top of what a premium is now. So it might be cheaper for you when they do, you do do it. But that might be countered against the rise in their premium. What's going to happen then, if you know what I mean? So for me, I'm just going ahead with it now. It's, it's, it's like the old saying, if, okay, you buy a property and wait, you don't wait to buy. So similar to that. But, um, yeah, personally, I'd go ahead because every year that you wait, it could add on to your premium. Yeah. If you're in central London, for example, like in Mayfair, Kensington, Regent's Park, then maybe it might be worth waiting. But if you're in the region that I'm in, like a hundred fifty five thousand, two hundred thousand for a flat, then maybe it's, I'll still go ahead now, personally. Yeah.

Okay, thank you. Yeah. All right. Yes, Jay. Mister Lover, Damian. How are you doing? Well, I'm sorry. I'm Mister. I had Wi-Fi issues and freaking laptop issues and Zoom kicking me out of freaking Zoom meeting. But, um, I've got the majority of that, buddy. Listen, you're not just a pretty face. Oh, yeah. Look at you. You put all that time to give us do them sexy slides and move your capital letters. I was like, yeah. But before I get started, quickly, really stop flexing your frigging biceps. That's all I keep seeing in the screen is Ricky reflecting his biceps. Look, you just see him sitting there flexing like his arms need to look at that like they need to look any bigger. And friggin Norman, just now looking at the phone rather than driving his lorry. I thought I said, Norman, put the phone down and concentrate on the road. I thought the guy was going to, was going to have an accident. Um, but just quickly, Jay, I got a couple of questions for you. But before we jump to them, just, just to quickly, if you don't mind me commenting on, on what some of the guys said just there, just to share my little two pictures, if that's right with you. Yeah. You've got to like reduce things, buddy. I'm in the same boat as you, right? Um, nobody knows. And that's why you're, you're playing it from that angle. Um, and, and you know what? I've been hearing about these review things for freaking years. But I tell you this, there's so many very rich and powerful people that own a hell of a lot of freeholds, right? I can't see them passing anything that is going to not work in their favor. What I feel is going to happen, and again, I don't know what I feel is going to happen, is there's going to be some benefits to leaseholders. You know, maybe it's going to be easier to do the types of operations that we want to do. Maybe the whole process of renewing your lease is going to get easier and maybe a bit fairer. But I can't see how they're going to make it more financially beneficial for leaseholders, um, because people that own freeholds right now, you're basically going to be devaluing their asset. So again, I don't know. But me personally, I'm with you. I'm renewing leases now. I'm not waiting. I fully agree that every year that goes by, that lease is getting shorter, and therefore the, the price of the renewal is going up. So whatever savings you might get, and, and look how many years they've been talking about this for, and they just keep delaying it and delaying it and delaying it and delaying it. So in regards to mate, either asked about the reviews, there was a really good question. My my personal, um, opinion is the same as yours, which is just don't hang around for that. And I don't think we're gonna get, maybe I'm gonna be proved wrong, right? But I don't think we're gonna get much, um, of a discount. Regarding Isaac's question, hi Isaac, by the way, um, if you, um, tap into the masterclass that we've done last week or the week before with Mark, and he's crowdfunding, because you're right, in regards to what Isaac said when he said, is there a way of taking into account the existence? I actually don't want to put our money down, and neither do I. You need and you want to, whatever you're going to be doing on day one, you want to put your money out straight away. But like he rightly said, if you do that, a creative way by using bridging, then there's going to be other security that you need to put in place, right? But the masterclass that was done the Wednesday before last by Mark, he showed us very clearly how you can do this using crowdfunding. And the difference between crowdfunding and bridging, the rates weren't that different. He was still one percent a month. But the difference between credit funding and bridging was he was giving you like 90% of the GDP. He wants to put a bit of money in, so he wants you to have a bit of skin in the game. But you could borrow so much more using no other security if the deal was right. And, and you wouldn't need to put in, yeah, like I said, additional security or modern 10%. He was asking for. But if the deal was right, you could probably push him to 5%. So I would go and watch that as a, like any one of you that didn't catch that two weeks ago, go and watch that. I've said it numerous times, that one opened my eyes. Um, with the conversations that I had with Mark leading up to that, I kind of knew what he was offering, but it could be a game changer to a lot of you. So regarding that, Isaac, go and see that masterclass that this in the members land, in regards to, um, what Mark done, because you're going to find that super useful, mate. Either asked about, um, buying a property now and sending it and flipping it and not paying no fees. And you was talking about variable rates or fixed rates. What you're looking for powers, no tie-ins. Whatever rate you take, variable or fixed, you just want a mortgage product that's got no tie-ins. Um, and even sometimes these mortgage products with tie-ins, just, just pay to pay the penalty. Like it's not really like a big deal. And a lot of brokers say, oh, you shouldn't do that. That's more because they're pushing you into bridging. But I've done that a few times. Ain't really been an issue. So there were the three things I wanted to add, right? Jay, my two questions to you. The first one is renewing the lease. Right? You, it seems that your strategy involves you buying the property and then once you've bought it, you then renew the lease and then whenever you get a chance, you're going to do, um, a remortgage on it, right? And pull whatever money back you want to pull back. Um, am I right in saying that? Is, is your, do you renew the leases after purchase?

Yeah, most of them. Um, there was one, um, I did last year, I think it was June, where the person had served the section 42 notice already, and then but she didn't have the cash to actually pay for the lease extension. So part of my, well, part of my role, or part of my position, was to complete exchange and assembly all in the same day. So, so we did that once. But she had a reasonable serve this first session, what you noticed before. But a majority of them are, yes, like what you mentioned.

Excellent. Now, you see that one scenario there, how did you like that? How did that, what did you think of the way that went compared to the other ways that you've done it? Now, that one, because I didn't have any control of what the premium price was, um, I didn't really like it that way. But because the premium price was fine, that one was again around the 16,000 pound mark, that wasn't too bad. But if, for example, you've agreed a fee already with, uh, will the vendors agree to feed the freehold already? And it's not a fee that fits him with your figures, then it could be a bad deal. So in any manner, people like just that, what you're saying, you prefer to do it the voluntary way. I actually referred to the section 42 notice way. And I prefer to do it the way that that we just spoke about that rather than the other way. Because even though there might be a difference in the premium, you're going to pay, would you not have had to put down less money on the purchase?

Not in this case. Not in the last case. No, no, no, no. It's not really a big deal. But if the lease was like 50 grand, yeah, exactly. Yeah, it might be a bit more of a difference, right? And then the last question, we spoke about this in the room, but I've never really asked you about it. I had, what was you on the, on the reconfiguring of these flats when you've got the option to do it? Is that something that you like to look at?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So basically, whenever the agents come up to me with a property, again, similar to you, I look at the floor plans. So some of them might have worked these do into it like a BRR. Some of them I can reconfigure it from one bed to a two bed or two bed to a three bed. And they might have obviously a short lease as well. So depending on what they give me and offer me, then sometimes I reconfigure it afterwards. So I extend the lease, and then after I'll extend the lease, then I reconfigure it and give it a refurb. So like a triple threat in some cases. But yeah, I look for that as well.

You're going to get, I mean, yeah, the refurb obviously the traditional form of the value. But by upping that, that when you get exactly what you said, that you've got three different value adds that you've done. How did you, one last question before you wrap up, how did you get into your strategy of buying the, how did you fall into that? What, what, what path did you go down for you to go, oh, yeah, actually, you know what, this is going to be, I mean, I'm sure that if you got offered a deal that wasn't part of this strategy, but it was a deal you're going to buy anyway, but generally you're, you're pretty well known for buying flats with low leases. How did you fall into that strategy?

Yeah, so basically, um, I was doing some real mortgages before, basically from the last credit crunch. I had quite a few. I think I must have maybe 13, 12, 13 mortgages with them, burning and mistries. And then after their credit crunch, they changed their system. So now I think you can only have maybe what, three or four particular mortgages with them. And then what they were doing as well, you couldn't extract any cash from it. So no remortgaging, no further advances, no nothing. So I just left them ones for for quite a few years. I mean, all the equity just building up in them. So I thought, all the equity in them, and I can't take it out. Let me just change over these mortgages to TMW. Then, so the surveyor, I think I had about four evaluations in one day. So the Connell surveyor went around with myself in, in one car to each property. Three of them, the leases were right. And then the fourth one, he said to y'all, uh, misleading 73 years. But I said, yeah. So we can't offer you what you want on it. So I said, okay. But if you extend the lease from this particular one, as soon as you do so, we can value it at, I think it was 215,000 back then. So I said, okay. So wait. So I said to you. So he said to me, basically, you, you go away, you extend the lease. But as soon as you extend it, you send TMW a copy of the new lease with a new lease extension on it. And then automatically they'll update it on this, then the index valuations, and then you can take out the rest of the further advance from that property. So I said, all right, it's a good idea. So basically, that gave me any ideas for some of the other ones to buy flats with low leases, um, and forward because it creates like an instant equity or it can uplift straight away. So from then, just got the idea. I mean, just move forward from it. So that's that started basically.

Love that. You see some pan notes and you panned on the opportunity to do nobody 100. All right, um, well, mate, yeah, look, exactly like what all the other guys said, fully appreciate you giving your time out today, Jay, and and putting that presentation. Again, mate, honestly, he's very nice of you. And the guys, I've got, and I've got all of us have got so much from me. Um, right, any more questions from anybody? Uh, yeah, it's all again. Sorry. Um, JP, Damian, by the way, funny, you know, I like your obviously your conversation. I was cracking up actually. So, but also very, very good questions at the same time, because I made some also extra notes on that. Um, just a quick last one, if you don't mind, JP. Um, with your, which was your rent? I know you said you do currently rent because you don't wish necessarily manage the property. What kind of scheme do you use to have the guaranteed rent? And you, um, are using councils or using another rent-rent company? How are you doing the guaranteed rent from, uh, yeah, with your property?

Yeah, most of once I'm doing recently, the last four or five, I've been using like a local company, and they do, um, guaranteed rent schemes. So they put private tenants in there, not housing association tenants in there. So, um, that's what I've been doing with them, and they've been reliable. So during the last COVID, there were no issues. Command was paid on time and so forth. But the ones I've got previously, um, I've used housing associations and I've used local councils. So, um, with the local councils, that Harambee Council, for example, or Info Council, they do like two-year contracts, three contracts, and five-year contracts and guaranteed rent schemes under the private leasing sector. Now, with them ones, um, the contracts that I've gone for are temporary accommodation. So that they pay me direct. Because some of the contracts that they have, they pay the tenant. I mean, a tenant pays you. Yeah, I don't want it that way because sometimes the parent gets happy. They see like a grind going into their account. They're thinking, oh, let me just take 200 pound out of that and give the landlord the rest. Um, I don't want that. So I've got contracts with the councils and how the situation where they pay me direct rather than paying the tenants. And as you can see, it's like you get an extra, you get maybe 100, 150 pounds less than the normal market rate on in some cases. But like I said, it's, it's guaranteed. Been through a lot of credit countries, been through COVID, been through Brexit, still getting your money into your account like a wage every month. So there's no issues and no worried about, um, no not worried about section 21 trying to evict tenants and so forth. None of that I worry about. So that's my way of doing it to take away the hassle and the stress of it, basically. So you get less money per month, but, um, you get more free time to do what you want to do and less stress. Yeah.

Perfect. Yeah, that makes sense. I'm going to guess the council ones you do have, but also under there is an FRI contract contract, basically. The one with the councils. So that we, the, you don't need to do any formal repairing. The council would do that. Oh, the basic ones. Yeah, the basic ones. Yeah. So say, for example, the toilet's not flushing, or, yeah, um, anything below a certain cost amount, they pay for. If anything heavy, like the boiler is not working, or a storage, so the storage heater is broken, then I have to pay for it. But if anything else, then they send their council workers around there, they're going to fix this. The small costs, like if a latch is not working, though, that's not working, they won't call me up. They'll just send their council tradesmen or women around there to go and fix it. I mean, it's nothing of my nose. So the heavy things, I do the small things, they do. Yeah.

Okay. Yeah, perfect. I appreciate that. Yeah. Okay. Thank you again. Yeah. You're welcome. One, one thing on that, on that Jay, for Addie, there in regards to the guaranteed rates, and, and I'm with you, Jay, and I know Rick does it as well. A large proportion of my portfolio is on the guaranteed rent scheme because it's just less headache. And you say that 150, Jay, but like you, you pointed out in your presentation, when you said like, oh, I'm getting 150 less, but then 70 quid would have gotten agency fees anyway. That's half your money gone. That's about void periods and council tax bills. Do you got paid for these tenants ain't in there? So, um, I'm with you. But one thing that that plays on my mind, and I know this is not the case with you and Ricky spoke about it previously, and you guys have structured yours in a better way than what I did. I done mine years ago, um, is that I've given all of mine to one, more or less, I'd say 85% of my, my guaranteed rent stuff is with one company. So when you give these, these properties to these agents, and maybe like in my case, it's like it's an agent just representing the council, or like these agencies that Ricky and Jay have used, I've put all my eggs in one basket. And although it hasn't caused me a problem, and I've got a great relationship with these people and everything ticks over as it should do, one thing that does play on my mind is like, maybe I shouldn't have given them so many properties. Um, because now they've got me by the ghoulies, right? If anything was to go wrong, which it hasn't, but that does play my mind. So I would say to anybody, um, is, is when you do these guaranteed rent schemes and you start giving them your properties, don't give them all to one. Find, find another one that does the same thing and just spread them out a little bit, which I think you do anyway, Jayden. You ain't got all of your properties with one company, have you?

Exactly. Yeah. The most I've got with one is like with LP, and I've got 11 of them. And then after that, I've given some to Enfield, Haringey, and like finally. So I mix it up a little bit. So like you said, you just diversify because if you give them all into one company, then it's like it's a bit more of a risk, if you know what I mean. Yeah. So I've diversified. That one there that's got 11, Jay. If they went under tomorrow, or if they decided they weren't going to pay you no more, you've got 11 rents that ain't going to come in. That's like, whatever percentage of your portfolio, right?

Don't worry. I mean, the worst position of what you are, right? So, and that's what the problem is. Like, if you find yourself in that predicament, where if for whatever reason, someone don't want to pay you no more, you're not chasing one. Like, if you've got 11 properties and one tenant stops paying you, that's 10% of your rate roll that you can cover that from the properties from the rest. If you've got, um, that percentage, depending on how big your portfolio is, I don't know what percentage of Jay's portfolio 11 is. But like, if it's a large percentage, and they stop paying you, then you're up in [ __ ] street roll style. Um, and although that may never happen, and I've been with this company for over 15 years, they've had a lot of my properties, right? And it's been an absolute perfect surface. And I get on really well with with the owner and all that stuff, right? But it's just one of them things when you're trying to protect yourself. Just one, one little, whatever it might be, suddenly tomorrow, he gets a drug addiction, suddenly tomorrow, he gets hit by a bus, suddenly tomorrow, they go under, suddenly tomorrow, like anything, and your whole, like, you could, and you might not even know that that's the case, right? That you've got all of your business depending upon one person or one company. You don't even realize that until like you sit back, like, I mean, you got hold nobody, but now it's such a mission to unravel that and unroll that, which I am doing slowly. But, um, yeah, just a little point to throw in there. Would you agree with that, Jay?

Yeah, yeah, definitely. As well, did you give them to the last? You're doing the last credit crunch? Did I help you? Nothing great. But you know, I've been with you guys since 2003, 2004. I sold the owner deals. Have we got a good relationship? It's always been spot on. Um, all through the last credit crunch, they paid me on the button. All through the pandemic, they paid me on the. I can't fault the service that they give. And that's why I've been going back to them for so long. But you know what it is sometimes, guys, is that when you're in your daily mix, that you can't see the wood through the trees. And, and when you're just doing what you're doing, every single day, and that's what you're giving to them, give it to them, give it to them, give it to them. I ain't you one day when you sit back and like, at the penny drops, you go, hold on a minute, what if flat [ __ ] was to hit the van? Like, what if that was to happen? It's a problem. I mean, there's so many possibilities, right? But that is a possibility. So if I could rewind the clock and do things differently, just for peace of mind, I probably won't give them so many properties. If that's just, I would have tried to to build, built more relationships with more people. But there's only so much you can do to cover yourself, right? But I just thought I'd throw it in there. That was all.

Yeah, that makes sense. That makes sense. Yeah, I appreciate that. Thanks, Damian. Is all for adding that. Yeah, he does make sense. So yeah, uh, yeah, thanks for that. Thanks, JP, as well. Hi, hi, Daniel. You are there? Yes, I'm good. Thank you. Thanks for doing the webinar. Uh, yeah, my question is, uh, the lenders that you spoke about, do they lend for high-rise buildings? And also areas that have a lot of council tenants and a very low amount of people that own their properties?

Yeah, now, with that, all the ones I buy have a maximum of ground floor, first floor, second floor, and third floor. But, um, I'm not sure if those lenders go and do tower blocks. I'm not sure. So that would have to be a question for your broker, right? Yeah, yeah. All of mine have only got a maximum of of four levels, if you include the ground, or four levels only. Yeah.

Cool. Yeah. What your, what your broker will do, so type in all the property information into her, his or her database, and then obviously they'll come up with lenders that will lend on that. I'm not sure about the criteria in terms of high rises with those five or six I've mentioned. Yeah.

Do you tend to stay away with high-rise buildings? Yeah, no, I don't touch them. No.

Okay, okay, okay. And, uh, roughly how long does it take to renew the lease? Yeah, there is, it varies. Pre-COVID, it's talked between, what would you mean? You're going to land registry or going through the whole process of once you know, once you purchase the property, then yeah, that a small list, it could take, or as short as it could take is probably six weeks, or the longest it takes maybe nine months. It depends if you serve them with a voluntary notice or if you do it through a section 42 notice. Yeah.

Okay. Like this letter here, um, that I did, where was it? Like this one, is this one, this one I'm doing now. This one took about, um, three weeks to agree. Not this one, the other one took about three weeks to agree. Okay. And then now it's going to take me, where's the email? It's going to take me a minimum of, yeah, this one here. I was like, this one, I was negotiating about three weeks worth of letters, just back and forth, letters by email, buses, and they saved it as a PDF and sent it to me. And I'll say that at the PDF and sent it to them and vice versa. It took about three weeks to agree a fee. And then they wrote to my sister on the 6th of September. And then now I've got, um, to complete within three months, which is all right. Because once you, once you agree a premium, then it's just amending the lease details and then, I mean, that's it, really. There's nothing else finished. I've got something there for you, obviously, is 1250 pound possibility and 15 pound for the disbursement as well. Yes. So anything, it depends. A minimum of about six weeks up to nine months. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Well, thank you very much. Uh, Daniel. Just quickly, Jay, sorry, Daniel, in regards to your question, buddy, when you're talking about for the people that are listening, when he's talking about high-rise buildings, that's generally blocks that are over five floors. And when he's talking about, um, privately owned, what the percentage is, if you're buying an ex-council property, and the percentage in that block or on that estate is less than 51% privately owned, so more than 50% are still owned by the council. Lenders don't like that. They're classed as undesirable property. So the lender that you're going to go to needs to be like a specialist lender. Now, nine times out of 10, your normal residential mortgage broker will not have access to these lenders. I've got two brokers. My one broker is my straightforward buy-to-let residential broker. Right? When I want specialist lending, it's a completely different broker. So you might not need, you might not be able to go to the same broker. It might have to be a different broker that you're going to go to, right? But the question is not necessarily, will you find a lender that will lend on these properties? You will. These specialist lenders will lend on these undesirable properties. And a lot of it will boil down to surveyor's comments, by the way. So they'll say to you, in principle, it kind of looks good, but it depends what the surveyor reports back to us on the day. So if he goes down to this flat and there's loads of kids down the bottom of the stairwell smoking weed, and there's people urinating in the lifts, and all this kind of stuff, right? He's going to go back and report that, and the lender's not going to look too favorably. So when you look at these things on paper, and you go like, a high rise is above four floors and 51%, but you can look at certain high rises and certain ex-council properties, and some just look, some of the little flower beds outside, some are presented so nicely, and that will hold weight as well. But your biggest, your biggest true factor is going to be this, what rate are you going to get? Because you're going to pay a higher rate when you go with these specialist lenders. And more importantly, what loan to value are you going to get? So even if you've got the nicest ex-council block that's got less than 51% privately owned, or you've got the nicest looking high-rise building, and the lender says, yeah, great, the survivor, let's go. They still are never going to give you 75 or 80%. They're not getting 80 on anything these days. It's hard work, right? They're definitely not going to give you 75. You're looking at 65 to 70%. So as a property investor, as you probably know, Daniel, or in your mind, you want to be putting down the least amount of your money possible. So unless it's really a, and then if you want to throw into the mix, why it's got a low lease when you've got all right [ __ ] on your hands, right? It's in a, it's in a tower block, and it's got a low lease. That's just double with headaches. So unless it's a real deal, unless it's a real screamer, I would probably veer away from those types of properties, especially, I don't know what stage you're at, Daniel, but especially if you're starting out. Because, and putting like this, if it's hard work for you to get finance on it, what do you think your end buyer's gonna have? What problems and issues are they gonna have further down the line when you go to sleep now, you wanna exit this deal at some point? You're gonna wanna sell it. Are you gonna wanna hang around waiting to try and find a buyer that can get a mortgage who's maybe not as aggressive or or as active or or willing to take the view on it that you are today? So I would save a lot of these properties unless they're great deals. I would still click. Oh, I hope that helped you, buddy.

Yeah, thank you. Thank you. Thanks for that. Yeah, he's, uh, I mean, at the moment, campaign about roughly about nearly seven percent interest with the lender that I'm with. That I met with. Uh, yes, but at least it's quite long still that I have. So dangerous. You've already bought a place then. What have you bought a high rise? Yeah, high rise on 11th floor. And your plan is seven percent rating right now? Is that we've together? Yes, yes, yes. Yeah. Okay. I know, I know what you're in. All right, buddy. What you might want to do is rather than us discuss it on an open line right now, I understand the situation that you're in. Um, get my number off. Are you in a member's plan? Or is Jay book you in? Are you in the investment 101? I know I'm not. Well, okay. Jay, can you give, um, uh, Daniel my number, please, buddy?

Yep, that's fine. Then. Yeah, give me a call down and I'll actually understand what you're, what you'll see and I'll ask you a few more questions and I might be able to help you. But I do understand you're in a bit of a difficult predicament and I understand why. But we'll talk about that. No problem.

Okay, thank you. Thanks for that. You're welcome. Come on, Jay. Wants some more questions. Jason, do you know what he is? Right, he's out. He don't want to 11:00 AM. He's sweat. He goes down the calf. He gets his breakfast, then he goes to the gym and and makes it like he's lifting some weights. And he stays out till three o'clock in the morning. So we're all going to log off now. But anyone that wants to stay up with Jay until cold night, he just keeps asking questions. No joking. Is there any more questions for Jay while we've got him? To be fair, though, Jay, that was such a good presentation. And the people that have asked questions so far are some really good questions. So we've actually covered so much content tonight. There probably isn't going to be any more questions. But if there is, like Jay says, you've got his contact details there. And he's always, um, around Clubhouse, which is where I think most of you guys obviously our members. We know where you're from. But the new people that have come and welcome and hello to all of you. Your model actually come from Clubhouse as well. Um, catch him in there. Um, so, yeah, Jay, and he also want to add, you're happy to end it there. Do you want to keep going? What do you want to do?

No, I'm happy to end it actually. Yeah, I'm fine, guys.

I think, uh, Caroline has a question. Caroline, you've got your handle. Oh, yeah. Yes, I did. Thank you. Go, go, go. That was Caroline was waiting it all politely with her hand. Thank you. Thank you, Damian. Thank you, JP, for your presentation. That was lovely.

You're welcome. Um, as an experienced leaseholder of buying property, have you ever experienced like the major service charging bills were the heavy ones?

Yeah, um, no, at them, no, I haven't. But, um, I know what you mean. Some people have been slapped with like a 16 grand bill to prepare the roof or something like that. But yeah, perfectly, I haven't had any. Um, are more to do with, well, from what I hear, more the council properties, and when they start doing, because the service charges are quite low, and then when they have some maintenance issues, like I said, repairing the roof or brickwork or redecorating the whole block, then they tend to slap the leaseholders with us with a big amount. But yeah, so far, I haven't been hit with anything so far. But with my purpose-built ones, um, what they've done once is, I think there's something wrong with the roof. So I pay obviously with normal service charge every year. But what they did for one financial year, they asked each of us to pay an extra, I think, grand and a half on top of the normal service charge to make, to obviously get the costs together to pay for the actual roof. But I haven't been hit with any heavy ones since since I've started, like 20 years ago, so I've been fortunate so far. Yeah.

Yeah, I had that experience of paying 24,000. 24,000. Yeah. Council plays for a normal purpose bill. Council. I bought it from the council. Yeah. Yeah, the council. So me and my neighbor, we are sent that bill. It's only six blocks, but it's only two of us that are leaseholders. So we ended up somehow, some areas they did some things, or they did to us. Some of them went to cuts. But I mean, I haven't got time for that. And me and my neighbor haven't got time for such things. So we just continue paying our own, you know. Yeah, I was wondering, is there a way if you are going to buy? Because because of this issue, I don't want to buy no more flat or at least, or you got to be anything freehold, you know, so I don't find flat buying flat interesting anymore because of this experience.

No, no. I don't know. What do you think about that? When you see, when you purchase, your solicitor should ask their solicitor or the council, wherever it is, if they have any major works in in the pipeline. Yeah. Yes. Look for that. So that's what I would look for. Because if there's some up and coming major works in a year or two or three, then I won't touch it.

Okay, okay. Yeah, that's good then. Yeah, that's good then. You always look at the previous major works. So if they've had some works done, maybe three, four, five years ago, six years ago, then you know that's that's fine. But there's anything up and coming, I mean, I pulled out of a deal, but it hasn't happened yet, though. I always ask the estate agent beforehand to see what if there is anything like that in the pipeline before I start coming.

Okay, okay. Oh, okay. Again, I didn't have no buying a flat, list holy spirit. That's my first experience on that. Okay. And I said, I would never go to that end at all. Yeah. Anyway, thank you, JP, for the advice. Lovely presentation. Um, I was wondering, you know, the, you are best recommended lenders or mortgage advisors? I mean, you mentioned about five. I think I managed to get about two or three. And I was wondering if we can have it in the chat. I have the one, this one, Morgan lenders, um, Lambert, Kensington, and the Capital Home Loans. You may mention Capital Home Loans. Yeah, I think I missed about two of them. Oh, you got Keystone. Okay. Kings. Oh, yeah. There is. I have Kingston. Yeah, yeah. Keystone. And you also have Foundation Home Loans. Okay. Foundation Home Loans. Okay. So for sure, call FHL for sure. Okay. Home Load. Okay. They're quite good. They're quite good. Okay. Foundation from the loan. They're good. Yeah, they're good. And the mortgage lenders, and the mortgage lender are good as well. Okay. Okay. From my experience. Okay. Thank you very much. Yeah.

Right, you're okay. Yeah. Okay. Have a lovely thing. And you as well. Yeah. Jason, I just want to say, great presentation. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. I love this. Love listening to you. Um, and I've always actually nearly bought a flat. You know, that flat I was going to buy. Um, I'm thinking I should have maybe bought it now after listening to you. Um, the only thing that, the only thing I'll get consider as the council that just mentioned it was the service charge. The block next door was talking.

About got hit with a free grand or they started paying three grand a year in service charges, right? Um, but you're quite fortunate you've never had that situation, which is good. Yeah, but they're pretty much out of your control, right? Exactly. Yeah, you know what you can do really if this... Yeah, not much you can do apart from just assess when a surveyor comes in with a report. Normally, they just survey that particular flat, but now that again, they might make, you know, we look around the grounds, might look up towards the sky, see if they can check the roof. Sometimes now again, they might put a little comment at the end of a survey like the word, the roof might be, I don't know, in normal condition or the root, the roof looks a bit worse for wear. But you can't really avoid it in some senses. But, um, the ones that that is the most, the build of when they built them flat. So, so for example, the development I was going for was about 20 years old. So I guess you can only go by, you know, how long it's been built and, and the worst-case scenario, especially a roof. Yeah. Um, yeah, okay. Yeah, that's more or less out of your control. Thank you. Yep.

All right, uh, JP, solid again. I hope I don't keep you too long. Um, uh, just to ask, um, if possible, if you have any particular questions, basically, if I need to look, basically for a lawyer to extend the delays, if there's, if you have a key question that, uh, we should ask them to make sure one, they're experienced and they will, they be quite quick in terms of, um, getting on with the job and also if I need to look up for any signs of, uh, no, no, don't go there. Oh, yes, yes, uh, kind of sign that I definitely am the right person. Do you have any, any tips or any particular questions that are, um, that'll be, um, useful in mind while, uh, while looking at, um, lawyers to do the extensions? Um, normally, um, it's through recommendation that I would go for. But, um, you have, do you have some like, for example, where I am, um, I think it's called YVA, for example, there they got a specialist lease extension section. So all of their solicitors in that section, um, supposedly professionals. So I look for someone that has got at least extension experience. You've got normal visitors and conveyancers, but I don't know, just maybe try and look online or ask for recommendations if they've actually done any lease extensions before themselves. Or like, like I said, that company there, they might have a specialist section. And if they've got a specialty section, then it should be, in theory, good at what they do. But, um, there's no, well, I suppose you could ask them how long they've been doing it for. Can you give me some examples of what these extensions you've done, um, have any issues with or any challenges and have, have you come across it, like got around it? So if you're new to them and vice versa, and maybe ask them something like, like that. But normally I go for recommendations myself because I look for a lease extensions solicitor rather than a conveyancer or a normal tack. That's what I would do anyway. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. Thanks for that. Yeah, I think that's a lot of good tips. Yeah. Okay. No, thanks. Cheers.

Yep, thank you. Jay, two things. One is you're right and Ali general, what I've heard so many different scenarios of people I'm using solicitors to do to do their lease form. And although, you know, they'll do the job for them, they'll legally make sure it's done, the advice they've been given is so bad. So Jay's right, getting a specialist is is really a good move. But by getting a specialist, you're obviously going to pay for it. The recommendation is definitely key. It can save you a lot of headache. Go to my Instagram, which is at I am Damian Murray. Everywhere is YouTube, Twitter, Clubhouse is always at I am Damian Murray. Hit the link in my profile and the drop-down box will come like a Linktree type scenario. And there's a thing on there that it says use my solicitor. Fill that form out. Yusuf Masaliza, who's regularly in the Clubhouse rooms, will come back to you and he will be your solicitor. I use him. He's based in Birmingham, but he can act for you remotely, no matter where you're based. He does, he's worked me for 15. This is a plug, but he's also like, you need him right now. Ricky's now using him. The ride, he's now using everybody because of the service that he gives. He's such a great solicitor and his fees are reasonable. Fill out that form and email him and he'll come back to you. And that goes to anybody else that wants to use him. Right.

And the second thing regarding the service charges, I have to say this is so off-putting for a lot of people, right? I'm like, Ricky, I know he feels that way. I remember buying my first flat when I was 21 and my dad said to me, you can't buy leaseholds. And the reason that people say this is because of the length of the lease scenario, what Jason spoke about today, that it could cost you money when it comes to renewing the lease and the service charge scenario, like what, um, Caroline just mentioned right there. And it is a kick up the bum. 24 grand is painful. Chloe, I honestly, I, when you said that, I felt for you, right? The worst one that I've ever had is one that I've got right now, which is 12 grand. Um, I've had ones before for like eight. Yes, it does happen a lot on ex-councils. Jay's 100% right. Um, but you know what? It's part and parcel. And I've bought hundreds of flats and I've done hundreds of flats. When you look at the amount that that's happened to me on the ratio is quite low. So don't let that put you off. I just make that point because people can hear that and go, oh my god, like suddenly out of the blue, I can get charged with that. To explain what Cavalry is talking about for those that maybe are very new to this, is that if you want a flat in a block, right, there's this thing called major works. And during your ownership, at some point, that, the managing agent could say that we need to get some works done to the property. And all of the work's going to cost a hundred grand and divide it by the 10 flats, that's 10 grand each. You've got to pay the 10 grand, right? It's a lot of money if you haven't got it. And you say you haven't got it, you can't go into a payment plan. How can you try to avoid this? Well, listen, and just to let you know as well, there's not a default on your lease if you don't pay your ground rent, 50 pound, 100 pound a year. That's a default on your lease that can get your lease, that can get you in big trouble. We're not paying your service charge. That's the money changes. It's a little bit different, right? They can't take you to court, you can't become a headache, you don't want to go down that route. But going into a paying payment plan with them is good. When you're buying the flat, you want to ask, what is the future expenditure? Well, like Jay Whiteley said, they're only going to give you a year to two years prediction, and that's about it, right? If a future expenditure amount does come up that is the responsibility of the seller, so don't just pull out of the deal. You say to that seller, that's your responsibility. I've just bought that flat that I stuck on Instagram thing the other day, it was like 10 grand or a future expenditure. I said, that's coming off off the asking price. In the end, we agreed eight grand off because like, just from me wanting to get the deal through. But but really, technically, that ten thousand pounds, if if I ask the question when buying a flat, is doing any future expenditure and the figure gets given to me, the seller is responsible for that. I want that amount of money ever paid right now or taken off of the asking price. Tell-tale signs of this, if you go down to the block, which you would have done because you would have viewed the flat, and it's kept quite nicely and it's all neat and tidy, and then you look at last year's accounts, like just said, and the amount they're charging you is not that much, it's quite reasonable. You because it's not just the ex-councils, it's the ex-councils and it's the shitty freeholders, it's the freeholders that know the laws and know the rights and charge you because they're actually shafting you. I've got freeholders out there right now that are actually shafting me. They're doing it because they can, and they're doing it because they're charging too much money and doing very little work. So when you go down to a block and see it in nice condition and the service charge accounts for the last two years show a reasonable amount of money, that's a tell-tale sign it's a good freeholder. If you go down to a block and it's not kept nice and there's no plants and the stairwells are dirty and the guttering is falling down and you look at last year's accounts and it's a little bit choppy, that's a tell-tale sign that you've got your freeholder or managing agent, which is normally they're both part of each other, right? So then when I get that scenario, that's when I steer clear. So there's some tell-tale signs. But yeah, unfortunately, it's part and parcel of voluntary solar property. But don't let me put you off, guys. Honestly, I know so many people that are put off for brand lease. I'm not saying that you should buy leasehold. Freeholds are great, but just don't be put off because of these, these, these, these scary stories that you hear because they are few and far between. Um, I just hope they don't happen to you, I suppose, isn't it really? That's about it. So just to throw that in there. Um, yeah, is there any more hands up, Nick? Any more questions for Jay?

Just one more question. That's right. Jason. Yeah. Do you own any, um, house converted flats? Yeah. Yeah. And some of them, luckily, I've managed to buy the freehold too as well, which is all right. Work in terms of the maintenance issues there as well. Do you just kind of get a quote and just share it between yourself and the other leaseholders in the house? Yeah, basically. Yeah. Can we pay for the building's insurance separately? And then, yeah, any maintenance issue, like you said, um, would be fish to do with the roof or the front, front garden, then we just shared across all the internal decoration of the hallway, which is small anyway, then we'll just share the cost. Okay. Cool. Yeah, I think normally that the ground floor flat might own the garden and the top floor flat, um, sometimes they own the loft. But if not, if because when you buy a top floor flat, for example, then you got to check to see if you own the loft space with it. Sometimes it comes with it and sometimes it doesn't. So that's another thing they got to check for. But the two flats in the block generally have to keep up with their repairs. And then if anything does come up, then we just gotta put the cost between us. But but those ones are more willing to show you the freehold than the purpose-built ones. So I've done that like four times, right? Usually in the leaseholder conditions, in case there's a dispute of some sort. Repeat the first part again, please. Is it usually the conditions of who shared responsibility of the maintenance? Is it usually stated in the, uh, in the lease? Yeah. Yeah. There's no, yes, yes, there's no disputes. There's no disputes. All right. Jay, thank you. Yeah, you're welcome. Yeah. Rick, you're right. It's all stipulating at least, right? So you're gonna have a snowy, a one up and a one down. It would be something like the ground floor flat is responsible for any damp issues and the first floor flat is responsible for any roof issues. Or the ground floor is 50/50 and the first floor is 50/50. And it will show quite clearly who owns the front garden, who's responsible for this, who's responsible for that. Nine times out of ten, it's in the lease. But, um, you know, these leases are so old and sometimes so hard to read, um, that, you know, it, it depends on who you've got downstairs, right? It's, it's about love of thy neighbor, right? Just try and keep it amicable. So, um, yeah, sharing, even, even sometimes in scenarios where it isn't my responsibility and Jay might be the same for you, you just tend to just do it just to keep the pieces, right? And just keep, you want the building looking nice. Sometimes these people, the ground floor has got to be responsible for doing this, keeping the communal area on the entrance nice, and they don't do it. I'll go and do it anyway because I know it's going to improve the value of my flat and keep my tenant happy. I've just done that on that on my YouTube channel at January House. Do you know that I decorated the whole community and put all new carpet down in a, in a four-story, it's a high school buddy to six flags for, I don't know, hopefully not. Why? Because I was trying to get the end values so high to pull my money back out again. And that couple of grand for me to spend, I knew I was gonna get it and get a better tenant. So I mean, that's an extreme scenario, but even on these one up and one down, Jay, for how much money you spend to keep it nice, it's worth doing, right? Even if it's not your responsibility. Yeah, definitely worth doing. I did exactly the same thing. I spent 300 quid on the communal rod. Yeah, yeah. Sorry, I've had a few friends. Yeah, I did exactly the same thing. I spent about 3, 400 quid on the communal area because having a valuation, but it trebled in value. So it was well worth me doing it. No, no, but nobody would do it. I bought this flat 60,000, four, three years later, I got a value of, um, 199,000. So 300 grand, well, 300 pound well spent. So I'll do the time again anytime. Yeah, it's worth it. You know what I've done? Sorry, Jay. You know, I didn't look, well, I didn't actually do it, but it was agreed. But the tenant wouldn't let me in the lockdown. I had this flat that I just bought just before lockdown, right? And I was refurbing it. And then lockdown happened. It was a one up and one down in Leyton, um, and I had the upstairs. And I said to the guy that on the ground, the ground floor flat, but he had a tenant in there. Mate, can I change your front door? He was like, why? Because I've done the communal area up and I made my front door like an oak front door. And his door was a shabby white door. So when you walked into this lovely community that I painted and put all laminate flooring down and changed the oak door that leads to my first floor flat with a nice little gold handle and nice little numbers on it. And I looked to the right and see his shitty door that I said, mate, you're making my flat look bad. So I found the land and said, buddy, I'll pay for it. Could it cost me 500 quid with it? Oh, can I check? He goes, yeah, mate, lovely. Anyway, would that let me do it? No, it's [ __ ] covered. She wouldn't let my builder in there. So I ended up having to put up with this. It's still ain't done to this day, a shitty white door. I mean, I was willing to go and actually replace the whole front, not the, I mean, the main [ __ ] door done anyway. But, you know, when you open up the front door and you go into the, and there's two other front doors that lead to the two flats converted, right? I was willing to change his front door to match mine because I knew how much appeal that would add to my flat. But exactly like you said, what people, people don't think that way because they're too tunnel vision in that. Why is that not my responsibility? Why am I paying for someone else's door? For I'm not doing that. No, think about the bigger picture. What are you gonna gain from that? Yeah, you're right. Obviously, try the first approach, which is getting him to pay for it, which is what I did. But it was a bit like, well, Damian, I haven't got the money right now. Enough. I don't know. I can't be asked. But if not, just do it yourself. So yeah, what I'm with you, buddy. So good. Yeah, it's best sometimes. That's what I say anyway. Presentation is key, especially for the surveyors. Yes, mate. 100%. I want my money back. Um, when I say that, guys, what I'm talking about is the remortgage, right? If you buy the property, you do the work to it, you then get the surveyor in there to value it at a certain point, so that you get 75% of that new value and you get all your money back. You've got to do whatever. Put pot plants at. Do you know what I do? I spray it with fruity air freshener before the surveyor. Watch. You know, I get someone to do that, just spray it, make it smell. It's that first impression when he or she walks in there. You want to do controllable, controllable. Do whatever you can do to get that end result. If it's within your power, do it. If it's not within your power, there's nothing you can do. But if there's something that you could have done and you didn't do it, they're more for you. Um, look at that. We need at nine o'clock now. This is turning to a two-hour Zoom, man. You've done really well. Any more questions?

Just a very quick question. So if, um, apartment, oh crap, I have so many questions. Actually, I've already sent you. I've got many, many questions. Maybe I will book a phone call with you if that's all right, because it's getting quite late for everybody else. Yeah, that's fine with myself. What do you mean with yourself, Jason? With regards? Yeah, because I, I am, um, looking at a block of flats and, um, it's making me a bit nervous because I don't know UK properties that well. Um, so I, I really would appreciate your help and guidance. Um, I'll just book a call with you separately, but thank you, guys. Yeah, that's fine. That's all right. Jay, she's looking at a block of flats that's 5.5 million. [Laughter] Is 5.5 million in excess of office only, but the owner is meeting me this Friday. With some chance, maybe he might be willing to to to offer a bet to accept a lower price. But you want to come with me, Jason? Where is it? In it's, it's in West London. Okay. Not too far, not too far. Well, what do you mean, where are you based? Um, North London. Uh, okay. So it's, it's very, very near to my house. Um, it's, so it's brilliant. It's perfect for me to manage. Um, I'll, I'll take a call with you. Thank you, guys. Lightning. JP, so it's elegant. Um, just last one, fiery one, sorry. Um, just, yeah, just, just kind of following up what Damian was saying as well. Um, when you have extended the lease and now you basically, uh, you've come back with a survey, uh, whereby the survey got back to you and said, if you had extended the lease, um, let's say 90 years plus, then they're going to give you a new value of a new example, let's say two to five. Um, yeah, I just want to know, just in that particular moment, did you have to do any work on a house to show an improvement? Or did they just simply base it on in terms of you now extended the lease, now, now basically the property of market value would extend the lease is worth this much? Or did you have to do any work on the house kind of to show to the fair, you have done actually done some work to give it extra value? Yeah, this one is just purely based on the lease. Yeah, based extension that, yeah, because, um, the one that first one I told you about with it, Cornell survey came around, that one didn't need any work to it. He just said, basically, if you extend it from 73 years upwards, then we will update our systems on the TMW systems, which is the mortgage work systems, serve a new index valuation, and then we can lend you the money, basically, you can do a drawdown. So that's what I did. So this one didn't need any work. But there are some, like I've mentioned before, where it does need a refurb. Um, you can reconfigure it from like a one bed to a two bed or two bed to a three bed, and you can extend the lease all at the same time. So you can do those ones. But all of this what I'm doing now is purely based on lease extension, um, uplifts, and that's it. Yeah. Yeah. Refurbs. Cheers. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. That's great. Yeah. Nice one.

Hi, hi Jason. Thanks for this evening. Yeah, I'm fine. I'm fine. Thank you. Um, really good nuggets this evening. So thank you for that. Um, just wanted to ask you because, you know, the flat I was telling you about, I don't know if you remember because you probably speak to so many different people, but if I just refresh your memory, it's a one-bedroom ground floor flat in a house. So there's a one-bedroom on top. And the lease is around 66, 67 years. The freeholder has never been around. This is over 15 years. So I've never paid ground rent. I've never paid any lease. The freeholder's missing. Um, so I wanted to purchase the freehold. Yeah. Um, yeah, you remember now. So the person you put me in contact with, he was really good. But one of the things he said is that I need to speak to the person in the top flat because he needs to sign a document to say he's willing for me to buy the freehold. Yeah. That's correct. Section, if it's called section five, is it called section five? Yeah, I think so. This is my email somewhere, but he's not prepared to do that. What do I do? What can I do? If anything? That's a tough one. It's a tough one. Um, I'm not sure about that one. I'm not sure about that one because you need his permission. That's what that person that you get put me into contact with said that I need his permission. He needs to sign a document. If he doesn't sign it, um, that's what I forgot to ask him. But that's what I'm asking you. What happens? Am I just sort of stuck because it's 66 years now? I'm stuck here. Yeah, you're stuck unless you know, you know, because it's an absolute freeholder. Yeah, you're stuck. You're stuck. I'm not sure what to do there. I'm not sure what to do. Maybe Damian might know. Yeah, yeah. You know, if you're going to be stuck, you need to basically your city should be changed. He should be right into serving notice on the other leaseholder to say, to him, do you want to buy this freehold with me? Like, you might have to, he might have to bite with you. What he might be saying is, I don't want to sign this form to say that you can buy it. I want to buy it with you. Right? So your solicitor should be able to serve notice on the other leaseholder and say, we are planning on buying this freehold. Do you want to come in with us? Please inform us in 14 days, right? Then they don't get it. It needs to be another follow-up letter after that, right? You have to follow the process. It might be three times you've got to chase them and make sure that the letter you send is a, is a recorded delivery letter, it was signed for. If it's not signed for, grab a copy of that letter off your solicitor, go down to the flat yourself, stick it over the guy's keyhole and put tape around it and take a picture of it. So there was no way, I mean, anybody's flat about seeing that. Um, do these kind of things like my solicitor, I can definitely guide you on this. But if you've got at least holds this, I say to him, he can't stop there. Force him to either say he's going to buy it with you or he doesn't want to buy it. And then you can go. That's the point of serving the section five notice. The section five notice is saying, I am planning on doing this. Do you want to do it with me? Do you want to buy it? Yes or no. So you're not, you're not stuck, but you just have to go through this process. So did this guy give you any inclination as to whether he just done, he's not interested, don't want to get involved, we don't understand it? So he's not doing it? Or is he saying, like, can I hold a minute? I might be interested in buying? What type of person is he? Do you think? What he said to me is that, um, he's not interested in it because I asked him, do you want to come in with me? Said no. He doesn't have the money. I said, can I do it then? He said, no. Why should I let you do it? Because then you will start charging me a fee, which, because you'll be the freeholder, um, and so he said, no, I'm not signing anything. And that was it. The lease that is left is about 66 years now. That's left. How long is his lease? It'd be the same because we bought it. We bought it at the same time. Yes. You know, like the first thing. But it might not be as easy as this, right? Is that a conversation needs to take place between you and him. And there needs to be a level of negotiation. First of all, it needs to be made clear to him that he's in a very, and you are as well, but you clearly know that, hence why you're making the moves that you're making, that both of you are in a very delicate situation right now. Like your lease is very point of being unmortgageable, which means you're not going to be able to sell your property. So you are on tender hooks right now. And you really want to get him to understand that, even if you have to put a clause in there to say that I will not charge you nothing, like there's gonna be no charge to you. Like I won't charge you anything. You think I'm gonna charge you? Be careful if you do that, because what you don't want to do is is offering too much, but then you're paying a higher price. You don't need to satisfy conditions without affecting you, right? If, let's for example, all else fails and you just can't buy that freehold, you could definitely renew your lease. 100%. I know that's, you're like, you're your eyes are on the freehold. Um, I would quiz you a bit more and say, why are your eyes on the freehold? Because when you buy that freehold, it's going to get valued and it's going to be valued on on the basis that you've got two leasehold flats with a low lease. So let's say, for example, the premium for renewing your lease is going to be 40 grand, and the premium for renewing his lease is going to be 40 grand. They'll value that freehold like 80 grand. So when you buy that freehold, you're not going to get it for the cost of your lease. No, they're going to take into effect both. What that will mean is that if ever this idiot upstairs, wherever this guy is, decides to renew he's lease, he has got to pay you, and you will be remunerated for some of the cost. But in the meantime, you front enough money to cover the value of two lease renewals and take into account whatever the ground rent is. I don't know if you know how much your ground rent is per year right now. I don't pay any ground rent. That's the thing. You don't hate it. You'd be, what is he saying? At least he should be. No, what I'm saying is that there was never any, um, any document to say that this is the amount that I need to pay each year. And I asked the person upstairs as well, and he didn't receive anything from the freeholder either. No, it'd be in your lease. If you read your lease, it will clearly state exactly how much your ground rent is, unless of course it says it's a peppercorn ground rent. You might see it said peppercorn. I remember the word. If that's the case, I'm surprised though, considering it's a 67-year lease. Um, but if it said that, then then great, which means you haven't got to take that into consideration. But you will have to take into consideration the cost of he's losing all. So just brace yourself for that if you do go down that road. It's not going to be, um, a cheap one for you. Um, but I would definitely issue whatever and he's first floor. It's a house converted into two flats. Are you seeing any development potential anything like that? No, no. I'm hoping to because it's one bedroom. I want to extend it into two, and there's space to do that. But that's about it. Yeah. Yeah. I, I would be questioning you as to why you want to buy the freehold. Maybe if you want to have a chat, I would think about that. I'd be sitting down if you're going, right, okay, let's work out what is this really going to cost you to buy the freehold? What is it going to cost just your lease? You'll get 90 years on top. By the way, if you go to the courts right now and you instruct a leaseholder and a leaseholder to act for you, you will get 98 on top, um, of what you've got right now. And the ground rent would go to zero. But it's already at zero. So you'll get a good lease out of it. And you could probably even throw in there as well, the operations that you want to do, um, because you do need 300 consent for those. But he's not around anyway. So what would you suppose to do? It'd be very hard for him to come back in five years' time and say, you've ordered this flat and I'm going to take you to a tribunal now or, or you know, because he was so, I wouldn't think about that. Um, I would be asking like, what Jason earlier, who owns the loft? Does this guy, um, in the upstairs on the loft? Was the lease stated? And if he's using the loft, you could use that against him. But it's a load of headache that you don't want. Carol, to sit down and work out what is going to be the easiest, less stressful way, most cost-effective way of you getting what you want. But before you can answer that question, you need to know what you want. Like, is romantic, but when you put pen to, I know what paper, what is the reason? What do you really want out of this? I want, I want a nice long lease on my flat, protected. And that's about it, really. I don't know unless you say something different. No, that's absolutely what I do want. A nice long lease. I don't need to sit and think, oh my gosh, I need to renew this in X amount of years. And I thought by owning the freehold, I would have less headache. But listening tonight, just extending it by 90 years may be the way to go and maybe the cheaper way to go. Definitely cheaper. And you know what? You're writing an idea. Well, grab the freehold if you can, right? But I think you get a 90-year lease on top. But if you're happy with the way that things are right now and there's no development potential there, this will be super easy, much easier and a lot less stress. And you ain't got to piss merit you off upstairs again. If you go to my Instagram, there's a drop-down box. My solicitor D O's are there. Hit him up. Put fit in the form. He'll know it's come from me. Um, he will, he's in contact with my leasehold surveyor as well. They'll be able to handle this for you. Super, super easy. You'll have very little involvement in it, until it comes to paying the amount of money that you've got to pay for the lease. With all, um, and it'd be happy days. I think that's on the little that you've told me. And again, I'm happy to speak to you outside of here. I think that's the best route for you. Get 90 years on top. And, um, and that will last you a long, long time. Brilliant. Thank you. I've joined your mastermind as well. So, um, and I, and I've joined your Instagram. So I can contact you there. I can DM you there and we can talk offline. Yeah, okay. Yeah, look in the 15-minute calls me. I'd love to have a chat with y'all. Okay. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you, Jason. You're welcome. Any more takers? Who we've got for Jay? Come on, he's got loads of time. I don't know. Um, any more takers for Jay? My hands are buddy. No, my hands up. Good. Okay, we'll wrap it up there then. Um, Nick's gonna.